Heart Facts.

Knowing that the heart is the most important organ in the body, vis-à-vis life, you should know certain facts about the human heart, which are unknown to the non medical fraternity.

You could describe these facts as amazing and would lead you to believe in the existence of Him, as only He could have created such a wonderful creation. Knowing other facts about the human body would only strengthen this belief.

Facts About the Heart.

• The size of your heart is about the size of your clenched fist.
• The human heart beats 72 times per minute, 100,000 times a day, 35 million times a year and about 2.5 to 3 billion times during your life time without a pause and in the same sequence and fashion.
• The normal adult heart moves 5 to 7 liters of blood per minute, 7600 liters (2000 gallons) per day and more than 200 million liters in a lifetime.
• The human heart starts beating at four weeks after conception and stops only at death.
• In an infant, the heart beats at 120 times per minute.
• It does this by generating its own electric impulse.
• The human body contains 5.6 liters of blood, which the heart pumps throughout the body every minute. The blood travels 19000 kilometers everyday, which is four times the breadth of the United States (coast to coast).
• The heart sustains the body’s blood supply via a 97,000 kilometer (60,000 miles) long network of blood vessels.
• During a lifetime, the blood pumped by the heart will fill one million barrels.
• The breadth of the arteries through which the pumped blood travels greatly vary in their breadth. The aorta which is the main artery is a little more than 3 centimeters in breadth and the end capillaries are so thin that it takes ten of them to equal the diameter of one human hair.
• The amount of force with which the heart pumps blood during each beat can be compared to the force you would use to give a tennis ball a hard squeeze. Even when you are at rest, this force is twice the force the leg muscles use to sprint.
• At rest, the speed of the pumped blood is one mile (1.6 km) per hour in the aorta. This speed reduces as the blood flow progresses through the smaller arteries and arterioles. In the capillaries the speed drops down to 43 inches (109 cms) per hour. (The capillaries are very thin and will not withstand high speed of flow).
• Usually the heart is tilted towards the left side of the sternum (breastbone) with 2/3rds of it on the left and 1/3^rd on the right side of the body midline. In one out of 12000 people, this position is reversed, with the heart tilting towards the right and the position of the apex shifting towards the right side of the sternum. This is called dextrocardia.
• Considering the amount of work the heart does, the average weight of the woman’s heart is only 255 grams (9 ounces) while that of a man’s is 350 grams (10.5 ounces).
• Again considering the amount of work the heart does, only 5% of the blood circulated, is received by the heart.
• The lub – dub sounds made by the heart and which are heard through the stethoscope or by putting your ear over the chest, are the sounds made by the closure of the valves of the heart.

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